Arya Stark
Arya is left-handed and talented in sums and housekeeping, and is excellent at horse-riding. In contrast to her more praised sister Sansa, who favors activities traditionally befitting a noblewoman and expresses disdain for outdoor activities, Arya shows no interest in dancing, singing and sewing, and revels in fighting and exploring, much to the chagrin of her mother and household tutor Septa Mordane. She is described as "wolf-blooded", blunt, impulsive and "always difficult to tame" by her mother, and was given the nickname "Arya Underfoot" by the guards of Winterfell. She is particularly close to her bastard half-brother Jon Snow, who encourages her to learn how to fight and gives her the smallsword Needle.7 The sword is well suited to Arya's slender build and her favored "Water Dance" (fencing) style which emphasizes speed and agility with a thin, light rapier used in quick thrusting attacks. Throughout her travels, Arya displays great resourcefulness and cunning and also becomes increasingly ruthless. Arya is the only one out of her full-siblings to inherit the Stark features and is said to resemble her late aunt Lyanna in both looks and temperament.8 At the start of the series, she is generally regarded as messy and plain-looking, and often mistaken for a boy; but there are multiple instances in the books of her (favorable) comparison to the beautiful Lyanna,8 and catching the eye of men later on in the series. She is also a skinchanger, capable of telepathically possessing her direwolf Nymeria in dreams, as well as psychically bonding with a street cat in Braavos.9 History A Game of Thrones Arya is in love with her adopted direwolf cub, which she names Nymeria after a legendary warrior queen. She travels with her father, Eddard, to King's Landing when he is made Hand of the King. Before she leaves, her half-brother Jon Snow has a smallsword made for her as a parting gift, which she names "Needle" after her least favorite ladylike activity. While taking a walk together, Prince Joffrey and her sister Sansa happen upon Arya and her friend, the low-born butcher apprentice Mycah, sparring in the woods with broomsticks. Arya defends Mycah from Joffrey's torments and her direwolf Nymeria helps Arya fight off Joffrey, wounding his arm in the process. Knowing that Nymeria will likely be killed in retribution, Arya chases her wolf away;10 but Sansa's direwolf Lady is killed in Nymeria's stead and Mycah is hunted down and killed by Sandor Clegane, Joffrey's bodyguard.11 In King's Landing, her father discovers Arya's possession of Needle, but instead of confiscating it he arranges for fencing lessons under the Braavosi swordmaster Syrio Forel, who teaches her the style of fighting known as "water dancing". After her father's arrest, Syrio is killed protecting her and Arya narrowly escapes capture. She later witnesses the public execution of her father before falling under the protection of the Night's Watch recruiter Yoren. A Clash of Kings Arya escapes King's Landing with Yoren and his party of recruits; and on the road, she clashes with the other Night's Watch child recruits Lommy, Gendry, and Hot Pie but eventually befriends them.12 On the way, the party is attacked by Amory Lorch when Yoren refuses to yield Gendry, who is actually a bastard son of the late King Robert, to the Lannisters. The Night's Watch convoy is overrun and massacred, but Arya and the other children escape through a tunnel. Before escaping, she rescues three prisoners locked in a wagon cage, among them a mysterious man named Jaqen H'ghar.13 Arya and her friends are later captured by Ser Gregor Clegane and taken to Harrenhal as slave laborers.14 After witnessing the torture death of her fellow prisoners, Arya begins nightly reciting the names of the people upon whom she wishes to exact revenge. At Harrenhal she re-encounters Jaqen, now under the employ of the Lannisters, who offers to kill for her any three people she names;15whereupon she names two people who hurt her at Harrenhal. When Jaqen asks her to name the last target, Arya extorts him to help her free northern prisoners by naming Jaqen himself as the third person. In order to get Arya to retract the name, Jaqen stages a massive prison riot that overwhelms the Lannister garrison. Afterwards, Jaqen offers to take Arya with him, but Arya expresses wish to go home, so he gives Arya a strange Braavosi iron coin to ensure her induction into his guild, the Faceless Men, and tells her to remember the passphrase "Valar Morghulis" ("All men must die" in High Valyrian) before leaving. The next morning, Roose Bolton captures the castle, and Arya becomes his personal cupbearer. Eventually, Arya escapes Harrenhal with her friends Gendry and Hot Pie after killing a guard.16 A Storm of Swords While Arya and her companions are making their way north, she begins dreaming of her lost direwolf, Nymeria.9 Later, she and her companions are discovered by the guerrilla group, the Brotherhood Without Banners, and is recognized as Arya Stark.17 At the Brotherhood's secret base, Arya encounters Sandor Clegane, where she accuses him of Mycah's murder; but the Hound survives a trial by combat and is released.18 Arya eventually escapes the Brotherhood alone, but is captured by the Hound,19 who plans to return her to her family for a ransom.20 They reach the Twins just as her brother and mother are killed during the Red Wedding, and Sandor knocks her unconscious to prevent her from being killed.21That night, Arya skinchanges into Nymeria during sleep and pulls her mother's corpse out of the river for the Brotherhood to find. Later, Sandor plans to ransom her to her aunt Lysa at the Vale, but is unable to proceed due to the weather. Sandor decides to instead take her to her great-uncle Brynden Tully. On their way to Riverrun, they encounter two men on Arya's death list, Tickler and Polliver, who were both Gregor Clegane's men-at-arms at Harrenhal. In the ensuing fight, Arya personally stabs Tickler to death and reclaims her sword Needle from Polliver's corpse, but Sandor is severely injured. When Sandor becomes gravely ill from his wounds, Arya refuses to kill him and abandons him to die under a tree by the Trident river. She travels to the port town Saltpan and gains passage to Braavos on a merchant galleass, Titan's Daughter, by presenting the ship's captain with the iron coin that Jaqen gave her along with the Valyrian phrase "Valar Morghulis."22 A Feast for Crows Arriving in Braavos, Arya makes her way to the headquarters of the Faceless Men, the House of Black and White,23 where she is initiated into the guild by a priest in charge, whom she calls "the Kindly Man". The Kindly Man demands her to dispose of all her past possessions, and she complies by throwing in the river but still secretly hides her sword Needle, which is the one thing reminding of her sweet childhood memories. For her training, Arya adopts the identity of "Cat of the Canal", a street child who helps selling seafood, and continues having increased more frequent and vivid wolf-dreams, which further prevents her from discarding her old identity.24 During her training, she briefly meets Samwell Tarly and later murders the Night's Watch deserter Dareon.25 After admitting her unauthorized killing to her mentor, she is given a milk potion to drink; the next morning, she wakes up blind.26 A Dance with Dragons Arya remains blind in the service of the House of Black and White for half a year. She continues to dream through the eyes of her direwolf Nymeria, but speaks of it to no one. While she is blind, Arya wanders the streets of Braavos under the identity of "Beth", a blind beggar girl, and becomes better at sensing without her eyes, as well as lying and detecting the lies of others.27 After skinchanging into a stray tomcat that followed her back to the temple, Arya is able to identify the Kindly Man as the person who sneak-attacks her with a stick every night and later surprise-hits him. For this achievement, she passes the test and regains her vision,27 and is given her first assassination assignment. When she successfully poisons a crooked insurance salesman without rousing any suspicion or collateral damage, the Kindly Man gives Arya an acolyte's robe and assigns her to begin her first apprenticeship inserted within a theatrical group.28 The Winds of Winter An excerpt chapter from the yet-to-be-published sixth book of the series, named "Mercy", was released on George R. R. Martin's official website on March 27, 2014.2930 In the chapter, Arya assumes the identity of an apprentice stage actress under the alias Mercedene (or "Mercy" for short). She performs in a Braavosi theatrical play, The Bloody Hand, a dramatized parody of the recent Westerosi political events in King's Landing, in which she plays a maiden (a whitewashed version of Shae) and rape victim of the titular evil dwarf Hand (a demonizedversion of Tyrion Lannister). When the Westerosi envoy, treasurer Harys Swyft, arrives in Braavos to negotiate with the Iron Bank for loans, Arya's theatre group is employed to perform the play to entertain the guests. As the play is about to begin Arya recognizes one of the envoy guards as Rafford (also known as Raff the Sweetling), a former subordinate of Gregor Clegane who killed her injured friend Lommy. She seduces him and lures him to her own room, before slicing his femoral artery, rendering him unable to walk. When Rafford begs for a healer, Arya cuts his throat in the same fashion as he had killed Lommy and throws his corpse into a canal. She heads back to perform the play, knowing this murder will most likely ruin her Mercedene identity.